Fleet management has become increasingly complex, with managers being pulled across various responsibilities such as vehicle downtime, cost of ownership, sustainability, procurement, budgets, and electrification. According to research from the JJ Keller Center for Market Insights, 74% of fleet managers describe their jobs as moderately to extremely stressful.
Despite the growing complexity of the role, fleet managers are often given more technology without a corresponding reduction in complexity. This can lead to a situation where fuel information is in one place, charging information is in another, and vehicle or driver information is somewhere else. The fleet manager is then left to connect the dots and make sense of the combined information.
The Challenge of Integration
A key challenge in fleet management is integrating technology in a way that truly simplifies the user’s experience. If a fleet manager still has to move between three systems to understand why the cost of running a vehicle has changed, those systems are not truly integrated from the user’s point of view.
I have encountered versions of this problem throughout my career, from mapping and navigation at Nokia and Here Technologies to connected EV charging at Plugsurfing and fleet technology today. The technology changes, but the product challenge is remarkably consistent. The goal should be to understand the question the user is trying to answer, rather than simply showing them everything the technology knows.
Designing for Decision-Making
Rather than starting with the information available and deciding how to display it, fleet management technology should start with the decision the user needs to make and work backwards. This approach can help to simplify the user’s experience and reduce the workload associated with managing a fleet.
Read Also: Chinese brands boost UK electric vehicle market
A good fleet product should be judged as much by what it removes as by what it adds. If five things have changed overnight, but only one requires action, the fleet manager needs to understand the one that matters. Technology should help explain why a vehicle is suddenly costing more to operate, or provide enough context to decide whether a transaction is genuinely a problem.
The Impact of Electrification
The transition to electrification raises the stakes for fleet managers, introducing new charging environments, infrastructure, payment journeys, and sources of information. However, this complexity should not be passed on to the fleet manager, who should not need to become an expert in how different systems communicate or spend their time manually reconciling information.
Technology should absorb more of the complexity associated with electrification and provide the fleet manager with something useful in return. The question should not be how much information can be put in front of a fleet manager, but how much work can be prevented in the first place.
By connecting information where it helps, identifying exceptions, providing context, and designing around the decision rather than the dataset, technology can help fleet managers get to the answer faster. This approach can help to reduce the stress and complexity associated with fleet management, and give managers more time to apply their experience, knowledge, and judgment to make informed decisions.
Fleet managers need technology that gets them to the answer faster.
